Topics - thecolclough

well, technically it's my third, but the first two were just low-res test versions of this one.

the object is a lowpoly mesh, originally created by selecting all of the faces in an irregularly-shaped object and doing an Extrude Together, then subdivided to 4 working / 5 final divisions. the material is a sort of glass / crystal effect, with the transparent attribute, and IOR 2. the scene includes fog, but that doesn't seem to have rendered. there's just one local light in the scene, with unmemorable settings

the render took nearly 2.5 hours, and used 134614270 rays. apparently. that's what the bit underneath the render window said, anyways.

i have no idea what it's supposed to be, really, it was just my first experiment in ART materials and rendering - i only downloaded 0.97 yesterday - and i thought it looked kinda cool.

hi alli haven't tried ASL myself (yes, i know i should, really, but i'm kinda busy at the moment), but i was just wondering if some of the more scripting-savvy people out there might be able to write some scripts for various special effects that you might find in an industrial environment, eg. showers of sparks, wisps of steam/smoke coming off things, etc.

i'm aware that it's possible to do this sort of thing by using other programs, or in high-poly ways (i seem to remember seeing a particle-based smoke test once, and the creator said there were x zillion particles in there), but i was wondering if ASL might offer a simpler, perhaps more lowpoly, in-anim8or way of doing things.

for the wisps-of-smoke thing, for example, would it be possible to create a lowpoly model with a transparency map and several morph targets, and use scripting to manipulate the targets in a way that would approximate real smoke movements? so, rather than positioning the object and then spending ages playing with morphs yourself, you could just run a script, specify the object's location, and let the script do the animating for you.

like i said, i haven't really explored the possibilities of scripting yet, but if anybody thinks its doable and wants to give it a shot, your efforts would be much appreciated

i've noticed that you can't set the divisions of a sphere to more than 32x16 without subdividing the object, and i was just wondering why that is? is it something to do with how the code works, or is it just an artificial limit, to stop people making ridiculously over-polied objects? i find it's sometimes a problem, especially when making really big spherical things, such as planets (yes, i sometimes build planets! who do i think i am, slartibartfast or someone? ), and i was wondering if there could be a way to remove the limit?

or maybe have a switch, so users can turn it off themselves if they really need all those extra divisions...

hi alli've been working on this little VB6 game for a few months now, i'm currently on version 4.2, and i just thought i'd post it here since versions 4.0 plus have some anim8or renders built into the interface - yet another different thing i've found to do with anim8or! the program icon is also based off a small anim8or render.

anyways, here's the link: ClikEmDead download package. i've tested successfully on Win98SE and WinXP, and unsuccessfully on Vista. any feedback on functionality (or lack of) under other OSs would be much appreciated.

version 4.5 is already in development, i'll post the update when it's finished.

nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, at least on this forum (haven't searched the old one), but how about a scrollbar on the sequence/scene mode timeline when it gets too long to fit in the window? every other video or audio app i've used (movie maker, audition and audacity, Flash, etc) has one, and i think it'd make life a lot easier when you're working on a long scene if anim8or had one too. the current click-on-the-last-visible-frame-then-press-the-right-arrow-key method is kinda awkward

i reopened an old file today, did a save-as, and started making some changes. in scene mode, i got this really bizarre bug, where some (but not all) of the objects randomly took on a texture which was included in the project, but which i never assigned to them. however, it only did that in the working views - i did a render, and it was fine, then when i went back to working views, it was weird again. render: fine. working: crazy. render: fine. working: crazy. kept going backwards and forwards, and it kept being weird, but only in the working views. pictures below. anybody got a clue why it might have done that?

you know we've got reference images? well, how about reference videos? exactly the same as a ref. image, but with a video rather than a static pic.

i know anim8or doesn't have any video playback stuff at the moment, but the fact that the renderer can handle multiple compression options, seems to suggest that steve is able to tap into the available video codecs, so i was just wondering, how much work would it be to include in-scene playback functionality?

it'd also be cool if you could make a reference image or video visible in the renders (i guess just have a boolean switch in the ref. image's properties, to set whether it renders or not), so that you could use them to create moving backgrounds, or video/computer screens in your models, etc. example: if you were building a futuristic city, you could place a 'reference' video on the side of a building to make a giant advertising billboard, a la Blade Runner.

hi alli built some lightsabre blades in anim8or a couple of years ago, for a movie project which never really got off the ground. i just rediscovered them, and i thought, since they're quite generic (they don't even have to be lightsabres, you could use them for other stuff if you wanted), i'd post them here for anybody to download and use if they want. they're 100% freeware, i won't say anything like "you must make sure you clearly label my models in your work" or anything stuffy like that although, if you do make use of them, i'd love to see a render!

i'm currently working on a pretty big short-film project, almost entirely in anim8or, and i've got to the stage where i have dozens of objects, several figures and sequences, and 20 or 30 scenes - and my problem is that it's all in the file in no particular order. basically i started by making the simplest things first, but i'd now like to be able to rearrange the order my objects appear in the 'Object' menu, so that all the bits of set are grouped together, all the props are grouped together, etc etc. and in scene mode, i'd like to be able to put all the scenes in the order they appear in the movie.

now, i know it's possible to open up the .an8 file in a text editor and rearrange the code manually, but that's quite a formidable task in a project of this size. it's also possible to do it with the 'Import' commands, but that takes ages, and is a pain in the neck. so what i was thinking is, for each program mode (object, figure...) it'd be really great to have a 'manager' panel, where (for object mode, for example) you could rearrange the order of your objects, easily duplicate objects, and manage object importing/exporting - i was thinking it could be done as a list box thing, sort of like the 'List Items' box, but with some extra controls on the side to allow re-ordering and other stuff. if this was implemented, then when you import objects from another file, you could use the same interface to present a list of all the objects in said file, and you just ticked a checkbox next to each one that you wanted to import, and then pressed an 'import all' button when you were done, rather than working through an endless list of message boxes. you could also take the 'Delete Object' command out of the 'Edit' menu, and make it a part of the object manager, allowing you to delete multiple objects simultaneously if you so desired. and maybe 'Object Settings' could be moved into the 'Object' menu and/or the manager as well? i don't know about everyone else, but personally i don't think having it in the separate 'Settings' menu is the best of arrangements.

hi alldon't know why i didn't think of posting this earlier - i wrote almost 600 episodes of this comic strip a while back, and i've been posting them online at 5 or 6 a week, i'm currently just past #350. the characters (well, most of them) are anim8or renders, but the sets (when i bother with them) are mostly drawn in in Microsoft Paint 98 (which i used to add the dialogue and master the comics as well).

i guess it's a case of "it's anim8or, jim, but not as we know it"... just thought i'd share it, as it's a slightly more unusual way to use our favourite software.

hi alli'm working on a short movie in anim8or, going to be about 6 minutes long, and it has some scenes of a medical nature. i've already built all the sets and characters, and some of the props, and i've animated more than half of the film, but i still need one more set of models, which is a selection of innards, for a scene in an operating theatre. i need 5 pieces, including a beating heart, and i'm not really sure how to go about making that sort of stuff. i usually do geometric stuff...

i was wondering, has anyone else out there modelled internal organs and might be willing to share them, or does anyone know where i might be able to find some, or if not, then is there anyone who's good at modelling organic stuff and would be willing to make them, or offer me some advice on how to do it?

i don't need them to be photorealistic, as the film has a rather stylised, geometric look, but they still need to be organic-ish, and recognisable as body bits rather than abstract reddish-purple blocks / blobs.

i guess it's a bit off-the-beaten-track and all, but if anyone can help on this, it would be much appreciated. you'd get a mention in the end credits, of course

i've noticed quite a few of us seem to be on youtube, and we've got various youtube links scattered in several threads on this board. so i thought, why don't we set up a single thread where everyone who has a youtube account posts a reply with a link to their channel, so we have a centralised 'directory' which lets us all find everyone else's videos quickly and easily?

no "i've got a problem" posts here, just "here's where to see my vids". please

just remembered i rendered this a few weeks ago, so i thought i'd post it. it's a giant crushing machine in orbit around a planet - it's part of a short film a friend and i are making, combining anim8or and terranim8or cgi elements, and some 2-d cel effects, with stopmotion animation. this particular shot is the opening shot for the film, and was made entirely in anim8or. the vid should hopefully be on youtube soon.